DIARY OF A PATRIOT

I did not intend to engage myself in any deep thoughts that day. I had spent day after day thinking about tomorrow, what would happen, how it would happen, and if we were still there with our integrity unscathed once this was ended. COVID swept the world and watching it from Jakarta, the city we lived in, we once thought it was a thing for the faraway places. Today, Indonesia had one of the worst statistics of COVID. Over two years, COVID had cost my Brother his business, the pillar of our family economy. Our horizon of a bright future shrunk into a point before it diminished.

Dark clouds formed and dashed towards us, standing up close at our face forming a big wall, blocking any future views. From looking forward to riches, we were constricted to sightseeing into tomorrow. From thinking about where to vacation, we wondered what to eat tomorrow. Not that our life quality had been reduced to that of the destitute's, but if we had to live for another two years weathering COVID and all its variants without any income, then we had to consume our savings prudently. So prudent that sometimes we felt like the destitute.

My mind was always engaged, to survive. But today, I wanted to give myself time off from thinking. I wanted to read a book of my choice, from its front to back covers, three hundred pages in one day, to be interrupted only by the essentials. I wanted to be taken to a world that was not mine, within which my dream of a bright future might resume, or my worries replaced with the thrills of a spy trying to overturn the politics in a third-world country.

My name is Dessara and my morning started well. I had had a good night's sleep and breakfast was peaceful. It was a Sunday, my eleven-year-old son Bo did not have his zoom class, he was helping his seven-year-old sister Bea make her breakfast cereal. Most of the time they fought over small things like who should pour the milk first. Children. But not today. Jude, my six-foot-tall husband, promised to take care of lunch and dinner, most likely he planned home delivery for lunch and instant noodles for dinner. Pathetic, but I was determined to have this day for me to unwind.

"Mama, can we have McDonald's chicken for lunch?" Bo asked with hopeful eyes. Fast food in the good old days was considered when we didn't want to spend much on food. Today, it was a treat. Something that must be planned a week prior. Fast food would cost two times more than home-prepared or other comparable restaurant meals.

"Yes Mama, yes Mama, pleeease," now Bea chimed in. I wasn't sure she really wanted McDonald's chicken, but I was sure she chose to align her wish with her brother's because today they were soul mates. You could tempt me with many things, and I was rather sure I would stand tall against them. But the two pairs of my pleading children's eyes in harmony was too much. I crumbled at their feet and declared my surrender,

"Alright, alright." Then they shackled and took me prisoner to their kingdom of charm.

Having their wish granted, they let me go. I picked the thickest book from my library shelves, one that I had read many times over. I devoured page after page. I was absorbed in a different world.

"Mama! Mama! Somebody is ringing our bell. It must be our McDonald's!" Bo shrieked excitedly, running out of the playroom to where I was lounging with my book, followed by his sister who had been following him all morning. He tugged at my sleeve impatiently, yanking me out of my fantasy.

At lunchtime, my planned me-time ended. I book-marked my book at page one hundred and ninety-eight and put it down. Jude took the delivered food inside. The smell was strong and tempting. As Jude opened the boxes, Bo and Bea were trying to get a look at what was inside. They knew it was chicken, but they still scrutinized it with the curiosity of … children. All of this was not to be missed, nothing beats the show of my two "monkeys" who got excited over a few pieces of chicken and a bag of French fries.